Four Tips to Save Time on Housework2:44

Your time is valuable, so "hack" housework and family duties to find a better work-life balance. Management expert and author Laura Vanderkam offers tips on how to save time and achieve equity with your partner. Illustration: Heather Seidel for The Wall Street Journal

September 27th 2016

a year ago

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A beautifully dated image from our picture library that went with a story about men’s reluctance to do housework. She is stabbing him with her laser-beam eyes. Picture: David SmithSource:News Corp Australia

A SURE-FIRE way to spark an awkward conversation with a couple is to ask who does the majority of the housework.

It’s often the case that each individual believes that they do more than their fair share of the domestic duties. Who hasn’t scrubbed a toilet bowl, taken a bin out or wiped a bench without being filled with the white-hot rage of “WHY AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO DOES THIS”?

It’s a sore point, because housework is largely a thankless task. Often, your partner doesn’t even notice that you did anything (hence the ever-popular move of leaving the vacuum/mop out to bring attention to the fact that you’ve been slaving away like a god damn martyr).

Despite a huge number of women stepping out of the home in the 1960s and joining men in the workforce, many still believe housework is a chore undertaken by women, and largely shirked by men.

** Side note: We’re talking about hetero relationships here, while also acknowledging that the division of housework can be equally as volatile in same-sex relationships. Sheer annoyance over domestic duties knows no sexual boundaries.

Aussie men have long had a reputation of being particularly undomesticated — possibly thanks to the cartoon character of Norm in the Life Be In It campaigns of the ’80s. They’ve been painted as blokey blokes who sit around watching TV while the lil’ lady makes dinner/vacuums under their feet.

Norm, taking a load off in the Life Be In It ads.Source:Supplied

But a new global study has delivered some results that fly in the face of this sweeping generalisation.

It found that Aussie men do more housework than most of the world’s men.

Only Danish men devote more time to domestic duties than Australians, who apparently average nearly three hours A DAY on chores.

Prince Frederic, the only Danish male we could think of. Picture: GettySource:Supplied

According to the study, conducted by The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Aussie men typically spend two hours and 52 minutes each day doing housework — 18 minutes more than the egalitarian Swedes, half an hour more than British or New Zealand men, and 40 minutes more than the Italians or French.

The three hours of housework Australian men are doing is broken down in this manner: an hour and a half on routine housework, half an hour caring for family and 22 minutes shopping.

According to the global statistics, released for International Women’s Day, Australian women still spend two hours and 19 minutes a day more than men in unpaid work, including housework, childcare and “routine shopping’.’

The 2016 Australian census figures showed the typical Australian woman spends up to 14 hours a week cooking, cleaning and organising her family while the typical man does fewer than five hours.

This discrepancy in the division of unpaid work is something the Labor government is hoping to address.

Yesterday the shadow minister for women Tanya Plibersek announced that if elected, Labor would restore the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ time use survey to measure unpaid and domestic work (it hasn’t been conducted since 2006 and the ABS canned it in 2013).

The aim of the survey is to highlight the gender inequity in domestic work (such as caring for children and the elderly) and inform policy in areas including parental leave, family payments, health, disability and ageing.

In a statement before the announcement, Ms Plibersek said “the Australian economy [and] Australian society rests upon women’s unpaid work”.